Reviews

The Academic Blogger’s Toolkit quickly astounded me when I started playing with it. Where some offer a handful of output styles for references, this has them ALL. Any journal you can think of! And it has so many ways to enter references: manually, by DOI, by PMID, and by importing a pile of references exported from a reference manager or downloaded from an online system.

What I love is that it features tooltip-style popups when you click on the citation, giving the full reference, so a reader doesn’t have to go to the reference list at the bottom to see it.

It has a lot of settings for customization, but it’s easy to learn and use. And right in the reference window on the editing page is a link to the wiki so you can easily get help while working.

This is a tremendously refined piece of work, a very fully realized vision. All the details are carefully fleshed out.

This is a great plugin – if you use it the way intended by the author.

It allows easy addition of citations to blog articles in many different formats (journal articles, websites, etc.). There is even an auto-insert function which uses URLs or DOIs to automatically generate the citation in the right format.

There are hundreds of different citation styles in many different languages available and new ones are added regularly.

What this plugin is not: a replacement for your citation database. Each bibliography can only be used in one blog post; if you create a new post, you need to create a new bibliography. But the plugin allows the import of your own .ris files, so if you plan on using the same source in many articles, you should use a bibliography manager on your computer and manage your citations there. While some might find this troublesome, it is actually a good feature: even when you uninstall the plugin, the citations stay in the article in the original way.

Also, support by the developer is great. Bugs are fixed in a short manner of time, and new features and improvements are added when reported.

This plugin is excellent. You can import your references from other sources such as EndNote, search for your reference using ISBNs and DOIs (and others) or do it manually. The plugin is easy to use and there is an extensive list of referencing styles (seriously, it’s extensive!) from which to choose.

While there are some minor improvements which could be made (such as being able to edit the reference once you’ve created it), there is no doubt this is an incredibly helpful and much-needed plugin! It’s also non-destructive which means if you decide to remove the plugin, it will not impact on articles you’ve already written. Now that’s sensible!

The support is second to none. On the few occasions I’ve had to ask for direct support, I’ve had incredibly helpful feedback within 24 hours. Suggestions for improvement are seriously considered (including the ‘edit reference’ issue I mention above).

There are one or two people who have rated this plugin as 1 or 2-stars. This is, in my opinion, incredibly unfair. In the past 3 months since discovering ABT, it’s been invaluable and has definitely saved time. As with anything new, there is a small adjustment period but I’ll be surprised if you don’t have most of it figured out within 5 minutes, particularly if you’ve used Mendeley, Endnote, Zotero, RefMe, etc.

Very impressed; I can’t imagine trying to use WordPress without Academic Blogger’s Toolkit!

A great tool that allows to easily insert references. Many scientific reference formats are supported (and getting more every time there is an update). Some automatic search functions are available and loading from files (ris, bib) is supported. The references tool fits right into the wordpress UI and is easy and intuitive to use.

The only major down side is the inability to edit inserted references (one needs to delete them and insert them anew), but the main developer promised to address this in future versions. A minor hickup appears if one deletes a reference in the text, one needs to update the references list manually, otherwise the reference reappears on saving the page/post.

The codebase is actively developed and regularly updated with a very quick response to request and bugfixes via the github of the plugin (the editing of references is officially coming next). The main developer is considered and helpful when discussing bugs and feature requests and his acceptance rate of feature requests is high. I have filed a few myself and they have been implemented/answered to my satisfaction

If you are blogging with academic references, this is a great way to insert references and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

3.3.0

Add ability to Pin reference list to visible window: The biggest personal annoyance I’ve had with this plugin is the fact that I’d have to scroll all the way to the top of the page if I wanted to interact with the reference list menu-bar. This feature adds the ability to pin the reference list in a fixed position on the screen so that the menu-bar is always within reach.

Add ability to Delete all references: I’ve received feedback that sometimes the processor gets so out of wack, some of you would prefer to just start over. Click this button and all the citations will be stripped from your document, your reference list will be cleared, and you can start with a clean slate.

Add ability to Refresh reference list: Sometimes the processor just needs a kick in the butt to realign itself with the state of the document. Click this button to do just that.

Are you experiencing any other bugs? Open an issue in the github repo and I’ll do my best to get it fixed in a timely fashion. Thanks!

3.2.2

Bugfixes

Fix issue that caused citations written before existing citations on the same line to be numbered incorrectly. HT @metallikat36

3.2.1

Sometimes you make good calls, and sometimes you make bad calls.

Changing the CSS selectors was a bad call. Sorry about that!

Bugfixes

Revert CSS selectors back to what they were originally.

3.2.0

New Features

Citations are now sorted automatically based on how sorting is defined in the citation style (no more drag and drop).

Fix issue that caused the plugin to break if your site is SSL encrypted.

Fix bug related to conference proceedings fields. HT @metallikat36

Reference list now enabled for all post types. HT @halatkins

Depreciations

The last-occurring ordered list is not tagged as a bibliography on page load anymore. This is now done upon initial bibliography creation. You shouldn’t notice a difference, but some users who have used this plugin for a longer period of time may find that some of their older bibliographys are not being correctly identified. Email me if this is an issue and I’ll walk you thorough it.

Special Thanks
This update would not have been possible without the help and support of Frank Bennett (@fgbjr). Thanks for all your help!

3.1.5

Fix PubMed bug that resulted in citations with ampersands in the title to be parsed as &amp;amp;. HT @Da5idHatch

3.1.4

Fix issue that caused peer reviews that contain special characters to confuse WordPress.

Note: Sorry for all the updates today. This should be the last one.

3.1.3

Fix bug that caused peer review data to not save at times.

Fix bug that broke peer review image upload.

Fix bug that caused an extra space to be inserted in peer review content boxes.

When importing a RIS file, the plugin now automatically makes URLs clickable. Also, it takes DOIs and turns them into clickable URLs (resolved by DOI.org). This option can be turned off by unchecking Links on the import RIS window. HT: @someonehere15.

Set reference insertion window to default to attaching reference inline, rather than requiring a checkbox click each time.

Add options to options page which allow for the following (HT: @metallikat36 & @canadiem):

Click and drag references to rearrange them in your bibliography. This also automatically adjusts all of your inline citation numbers on the fly.

Depreciation Notice:

This plugin now uses zero shortcodes. All citations and references are generated and served in realtime. This way, in the future if you no longer require this plugin, you can uninstall it without it breaking all of your previous posts. There is not one other citation plugin that I am aware of that allows for this, but I believe it is an absolute must. That being said, if you are an early adoptor, you will need to do one of the two following things to preserve your posts from back when this plugin did use shortcodes.

The hard way: Go back and regenerate all the citations that you made with shortcodes.

The easy way: Copy and paste one or both of these code snippets into your functions.php file in your theme.

I will keep the depreciated shortcodes live in this plugin from now until the next update. Sorry for the trouble this may cause.

2.4.2

Fix critical bug which caused posts without an ordered list to lose the first paragraph and indent strangely.

Fix typo on one of the CSS selectors on the options page. .abt-smart-bib => #abt-smart-bib

Note: I am aware of the issue with Internet Explorer browsers not generating tooltips. This is because IE operates using a very, very, very….very outdated broswer standard. I’ll work on a fix soon and push that out when I get it working. Thanks!

If you’d like to follow along or join the conversation on some of the next few milestones of this plugin, please see this excellent thread started by @metallikat36.

2.4.1

Fix bug that caused tooltips to not render at all on Firefox browsers (and Internet Explorer?) – If IE still has issues, please let me know. I don’t own a Windows PC so I can’t test.

Fix bug that caused the menu icon to display as a smiley face on new posts and pages.

Note: I received the following two suggestions from users. Expect to see them implemented on the next update.
1. The ability to have the reference list toggleable (similar to the peer review boxes).
2. The ability to make the peer review boxes non-toggleable.

Keep the great suggestions coming!

2.4.0

Parse multiple comma-separated PMIDs at once into an ordered list.

Option to add references manually for Journals, Websites, or Books.

Search PubMed from WordPress!

References from your search are displayed in a list similar to native PubMed and, if you find one you like, click it and it’ll be inserted into your post.

Insert references directly to your bibliography without having to scroll down.

Insert references and inline citations in one step.

Choose from a visual list of references in your bibliography if you do not choose to add citations in one step.

If Smart Bibliography not used, the last-occurring ordered list is automatically tagged with the HTML ID abt-smart-bib on load to allow for more reliable tooltip rendering.

Details for nerds:

Full rewrite; a majority of which is using React by Facebook.

Speed improvements & resource minification.

Documentation improvements will be added within the next few days.

Note: Due to the magnitude of this update, there may be bugs that I have not encountered (although, I did test this pretty heavily).
If you run into any problems, have any questions, or experience a bug, please file an issue here.

A special thanks to @metallikat36 for the great suggestions that led directly to the features added in this update.

2.3.1

Fix poor rendering of tooltip close icon on mobile.

Increase size of toucharea for tooltip close icon on mobile.

2.3.0

Tooltips on desktop and mobile given a much-needed facelift.

Tooltips now appear above or below depending on page scroll position (prevents chopping).

Tooltips on desktop given a close timer so that the user has time to click links in references.

Peer review boxes now show a default silhouette photo if no photo attached.

Bumped the z-index of the tooltips to fight against elements from other plugins overlapping (Please let me know if ’20’ is still not enough).

2.2.0

Instead of inline citations taking you to the references on click, the individual references are now displayed inside a tooltip. I’ve found that dealing with return links was too cumbersome and time consuming.

Inline citations now accepts a more natural format. For example, [cite num=”1-3,5,8″] correctly cites references 1, 2, 3, 5, & 8. Note: Your bibliography MUST be an ordered list AND it must be the last ordered list in your blog post.

Slow animations on all pages removed.

Adjusted peer review metaboxes with a clearer delimiter so that they’re easier to read.

2.1.0

2.0.0

Updated plugin for WordPress 4.3

Feature Upgrade: Formatted references are now generated and inserted on the fly. (Note: This feature is only compatible with modern browsers or Internet Explorer 10 or above. If you are using an earlier version of IE, there will be no change.)

Removed ability to use DOI / PMCID for reference insertion due to overall unreliability.

1.1.1

Feature Release: Integration with Google Tag Manager. Starting now, you can set up individual link click tracking via Google Analytics! Use this feature to track PDF downloads, page-views, form submits, or anything else you can think of!

Bugfix: Issue causing some users’ Peer Review Boxes to not be formatted correctly.

Bugfix: Add default citation style.

Add uninstall hook to cleanup plugin files from database in the unfortunate event that you decide to uninstall the plugin.